


For the Birds

by Siria



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Community: mcsmooch, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-11-16
Updated: 2008-11-16
Packaged: 2017-10-04 00:03:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23783
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sediment had buried it over the years, but some of the expedition's more adventurous geologists had found it while exploring the mainland and now their archaeologists were trying to reclaim it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For the Birds

**Author's Note:**

> For Jenn.

Sediment had buried it over the years, but some of the expedition's more adventurous geologists had found it while exploring the mainland and now their archaeologists were trying to reclaim it: a city that had once sprawled for miles along the shore, its white stone loveliness reflected in the estuary's sluggish green waters. It must have been old when Atlantis was young. The streets that meandered away from the river and back again were worn with the passage of many feet; the murals that had been found inside some of the buildings, still vibrant after all these millennia, depicted an unsmiling people whose eyes reflected no colour, whose hands gestured out of the paintings at things unimaginable. Their faces were not mirrors.

Rodney had gone there shortly after its discovery to scan for energy readings or signs of salvageable technology, a process which satisfied both his own curiosity and Woolsey's pedantry. It was an empty city, with nothing to pique Rodney's interest or make him fear disaster, for all that it creeped him out a little, but his all-clear sent the archaeologists and anthropologists scurrying there to find ghosts around every corner; their enthusiasm was even enough to draw Daniel Jackson on a month-long sabbatical from Earth. Rodney found it irritating—the mess hall swelling each evening with over-stimulated humanities geeks, chattering about stratification and nonsense—and it was all the more irritating that John seemed to find it the opposite.

There was no clear explanation for it: no ATA technology insistent on being awoken; no cute archaeologist with a fondness for short shorts and discussing phallic imagery; and Rodney was well aware of John's fondness for the Indiana Jones movies, but bull whip fantasies aside, he was pretty sure that John didn't aspire to be him. And yet each morning for the last week, John had been up at dawn to ferry a jumper load of archaeologists over to the mainland, and had returned with them at dusk—clean, dark dirt packed under his fingernails and a faint smile of contentment on his face.

Rodney was working up to asking him, to finding a way to unite the _why_ and the _how_, but as usual John threw him off balance. The invitation was casual, made over a morning's breakfast of hot, buttered toast and hotter coffee, which meant that it was made in earnest, and Rodney had no difficulty in declaring that he had nothing better to do today—he _supposed_—despite a guilty conscience which spoke of a series of simulations about to come due in Lab C. John shot him a look from beneath lowered lashes that was both conspiratorial and pleased, and that was enough to make Rodney think that he could expect great things from this trip.

On the jumper flight over, Rodney ignored Dr Murphy, who was chattering away in his ear as if the man actually thought that Rodney gave a good goddamn about palaeolinguistic something-or-other, and contented himself with thinking about what John must have ferreted out that was such a source of interest: a game, perhaps, or a robot, or maybe something with _lasers_. The anticipation was almost as good as Rodney knew the discovery would be, and when they disembarked into the sultry heat of the mainland's late summer, he was hard-pressed not to rub his hands in glee.

But when the archaeologists trailed out from the square where John had parked the jumper, right at the edge of the cleared part of the city—Daniel's voice already carrying in the morning air, directing workers to this part of the city and that—John didn't seem in any hurry to lead Rodney off in search of adventure, or robots. Instead, he jammed his hands into his pockets and slouched off to the south, where digging had not yet begun and the only ways through the city were those that had been worn by hard rain or the tracks of animals. John didn't speak and neither did Rodney, scrambling up and over the dense-packed earth, pulled along by curiosity and the vague certainty that following John hadn't led him wrong yet.

The city here was different to the one the archaeologists were uncovering, the stripped down thing that had too little of its old inhabitants' presence, and not enough. That city felt dead, gone in a way that even slumbering Atlantis had been back at the beginning, all echoing hallways and the smell of damp rot, but _here_— And Rodney knew all of a sudden that John wasn't taking him to something, he was taking him to a somewhere—he was showing him this city, the one that was living in the ruins of the old.

Trees grew here, roots slowly shattering the bones of the city into a gentler earth, and a carpet of blue-green moss was soft underfoot. Where stone walls were still upstanding, breaking through the undergrowth to stand taller than Ronon, creepers grew lush and unrestrained, and they must have walked half a mile before Rodney's ears caught up with his eyes and he realised that louder than both of their breathing was the birdsong. It was like nothing Rodney had ever heard before, high and liquid and beautiful, and now when he looked—up into the tree tops; in the nooks and crannies of crumbling walls; sheltered by fallen statuary—he could see the birds. Red plumage and pale, with shocks of feathers on their heads and legs that seemed too long for their bodies, they called to one another from a kind of belonging that surpassed Rodney's understanding.

Rodney looked over at John, who had stopped to sit on top of what must once have been a lintel, legs stretched out in front of him and the laces on his boots trailing undone. He looked curiously at ease there, and Rodney could easily picture him sitting here every day out of the past seven: watching, and waiting for Rodney to come see, too. Rodney went over and sat next to him, nudging at him a little with his elbow so that John would budge over and make room, and after a little effort, John did.

They sat there for a moment, companionable, content, while all the world around them sang. Rodney cocked an eyebrow at John; John smirked a little, to show that he was being serious; and when Rodney leaned in to kiss him, he was almost surprised at himself for his daring. John's lips were cool and dry, the scrape of his stubble enough to make Rodney's toes curl in his regulation boots and his fingers tangle themselves in the worn cotton of John's t-shirt. They fit together, slowly, slowly, bodies making sense of one another in a way only they could read, meaning translated by the quality of an exhaled breath, and that was why, Rodney realised, when John leaned in to kiss him again: he'd been watching, and waiting, and listening always.


End file.
